This week, we continue with our talk on the great and useful aloe plant. We have done talks on how to grow your own aloe and how to harvest your aloe for gel. This week we give you easy recipes for using aloe gel, either home-harvested or store-bought.
There are so many uses for aloe that trying to list them all would take pages and pages. Aloe can be used in beauty products, skin moisturizers, hair treatments, sunburn gels, first aid treatments, and so much more. For now, we will start with a few simple recipes using aloe gel.
As you know from some of our other talks, we like quick, simple recipes. We want DIY recipes that use ingredients that we would normally have on hand or that we can make at home. Of course, we want these recipes to work for us and fill a need in our daily lives.
Aloe gel is one of the easiest DIY ingredients to make at home and can be used in so many different DIY recipes. Aloe is truly one of the best self-sufficient supplies that one can grow.
Do note, as we said before, we do not have a large enough supply of aloe to harvest and use only our own homegrown aloe gel. At this time we are growing aloe plants with plans to harvest in the future. But for now, we are buying pure aloe gel in bulk to use as a base ingredient for our recipes.
Here are some of the quick, simple, and easy recipes that we have tried out here on the farm for our needs.
#1
The most common and easiest use for aloe gel is as a salve. If you get a minor burn, scrape or small cut aloe is a quick treatment. Simply break off an aloe limb and squeeze the gel onto the injury. The gel gives almost instant relief from the burn or pain. The aloe gel also helps soothe the injured skin.
#2 Aloe water
Aloe water can be used as a cool, refreshing drink. When mixed with water the juice has a cucumber-like flavor. You can add honey, mint, lime, or other natural flavors to give it a kick.
You will need:
2 Tablespoons of aloe
1 cup of water
natural flavors of your choice, honey, mint, lime, etc.
Into a glass put your aloe, either aloe gel or aloe juice. We used gel for this quick recipe.
This lovely glass was made by Popi from an old wind bottle. Popi makes glasses and bowls from bottles. We made do a talk on that one day as well.
Add the cup of water to the glass and mix with a spoon.
If you are using hand-harvested aloe gel, you may need to use a blender to get it smooth.
Add the sweetener, honey, sugar, or agave juice. We used Agave juice as our sweetener.
Add the lime juice or a cut lime, your choice. Which one you use just depends on how limey you want your drink.
Mix until you have a smooth drink.
Once you have all the ingredients well mixed you can either drink it straight or chill it in the fridge. The mix goes very well with green tea.
When it was available Green Tea Ginger-Ale was one of our favorite drinks. But it is no longer available in stores. This recipe turns out very similar to the Green Tea Ginger-Ale. It is not exactly the Green Tea Ginger-Ale that we loved but it is close. And we can make it at home.
As with most DIY recipes, you can tweak this recipe to make a drink exactly as you like it.
#3
Aloe ice cubes give drinks a special kick. If you add mint leaves, nasturtiums, or other edible flowers to the ice cubes you will get a cute, natural, artistic flair.
Making aloe ice cubes is quick and easy. You can use aloe juice or the aloe water recipe from above.
Put a mint leaf into each tray slot, fresh mint or store-bought. We grow mint here on the farm so we have access to fresh mint. Mint is also one of our favorite herbs. If you are using fresh mint, be sure to wash it before use.
Fresh edible flowers or herbs are also nice to add to the ice trays in place of the mint. You can decorate your ice cubes with any edible you like. Be sure whatever flower or herb you put into your ice trays is safe to eat.
Do note, every different flower, or herb will change the taste.
Pour the aloe juice or aloe water into the ice tray.
Put the ice tray into the freezer and freeze.
When you are ready to use the ice cubes, pull them out and add them to your favorite drink. These ice cubes will give your drinks a kick and an artistic flare.
#4
Aloe and Honey skin moisturizer
This recipe is good for people with sensitive skin.
you will need:
2 Tablespoons Aloe gel
1 teaspoon honey
In a bowl, mix the aloe gel and the honey, until smooth.
Apply the paste to the face, neck, hand, or really any dry skin area. Wait 20 to 30 minutes and then wash off with warm water. You can do it overnight but in our experience, that makes a mess on your pillow. It also may get into your hair if you have long hair. Once it is dry, this is not gooey but does leave your face a bit tacky.
This recipe will moisturize and heal dry skin.
We use a lot of aloe gel to make hand sanitizer gel. We did a talk some time ago on ways to make your own hand sanitizer and one on how to make DIY Bugatizer.
Again, there are so many other possibilities for using aloe gel. Do not limit yourself to just these.
If you want you can go online and research aloe gel uses. You will find recipes and “hacks” for all kinds of things using aloe gel.
As usual, we recommend trying out some and seeing which works best for you. Every person has different likes and needs so no recipe will be perfect for everyone. Pick a few ideas and try them out.
As we have said before every experiment is an experience. Just because the experiment did not come out like you thought it would do not mean it was a failure, you always learn something.
This is a blog we found in our research with a lot of good aloe recipes.
We hope you have enjoyed this talk and we hope you try out some of these recipes for yourself. This talk is in a series of talks on how to start a more self-sufficient lifestyle and how to start your own self-sufficient food supply. If you missed any of the talks in this series, please check them out.
Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.
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